Cambridge Studies in Film

Cambridge Studies in Film is a series of scholarly studies of high intellectual standard on the history and criticism of film. Each book examines a different aspect of film as a social and cultural phenomenon, setting standards and directions for the evaluation and definition of film scholarship. Designed for both film enthusiasts and academic readers, the series is international in scope of subject matter and eclectic in terms of approach and perspective. Cambridge Studies in Film provides a foundation in the theory and philosophy of the emerging visual media that continues to shape our world.

General Editors:
William Rothman, University of Miami,
Dudley Andrew, University of Iowa

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Psychoanalytic theory has been the subject of attacks from philosophers, cultural critics and scientists who have questioned the cogency of its reasoning as well as the soundness of its premises. Nevertheless, when used to shed light on horror cinema, psychoanalysis in its various forms has proven to be a fruitful and provocative interpretative tool. This volume seeks to find the proper place of psychoanalytic thought in critical discussion of cinema in a series of essays that debate its legitimacy, utility and validity as applied to the horror genre. It distinguishes itself from previous work in this area through the self-consciousness with which psychoanalytic concepts are employed and the theorization that coexists with interpretations of particular horror films and subgenres.

The 'I' of the Camera has become a classic in the literature of film. Offering alternatives to the viewing and criticism of film, William Rothman challenges readers to think about film in adventurous ways that are more open to movies and our experience of them. In a series of eloquent essays examining particular films, filmmakers, genres and movements, and the 'Americanness' of American film, Rothman argues compellingly that movies have inherited the philosophical perspective of American transcendentalism. This second edition contains all of the essays that made the book a benchmark of film criticism. It also includes fourteen essays, written subsequent to the book's original publication, as well as a new foreword. The new chapters further broaden the scope of the volume, fleshing out its vision of film history and illuminating the author's critical method and the philosophical perspective that informs it.

The reuse of images, plots and genres from film history has become prominent in contemporary culture. In this study, Vera Dika explores this phenomenon from a broad range of critical perspectives, examining works of art and film that resist the pull of the past. Dika provides an in-depth analysis of works in several media, including performance, photography, Punk film, and examples from mainstream American and European cinema. Proclaiming the renewed importance of the image and of genre, she investigates works as diverse as Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills, Amos Poe's The Foreigner, Terence Malick's Badlands, and Francis Ford Coppola's One from the Heart. Her study positions avant-garde art work within the context of contemporary mainstream film practice, as well as in relationship to their historical moment.

Satyajit Ray is India's greatest filmmaker and his importance in the international world of cinema has long been recognised. Darius Cooper's study of Ray is the first to examine his rich and varied work from a social and historical perspective, and to situate it within Indian aesthetics. Providing analyses of selected films, including those that comprise The Apu Trilogy, Chess Players, and Jalsaghhar, among others, Cooper outlines Western influences on Ray's work, such as the plight of women functioning within a patriarchal society, Ray's political vision of the 'doubly colonised', and his attack and critique of the Bengali/Indian middle class of today. The most comprehensive treatment of Ray's work, The Cinema of Satyajit Ray makes accessible the oeuvre of one of the most prolific and creative filmmakers of the twentieth century.

Interpreting the Moving Image is a collection of essays by one of the most astute critics of cinema at work today. This volume provides a close analysis of major films of both the narrative and the avant-garde traditions. Written in accessible and engaging language, it also serves as a guide to such classics as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Citizen Kane, as well as the art of cinema in the post-modern era.

John Huston's Filmmaking offers an analysis of the life and work of one of the greatest American independent filmmakers. Always visually exciting, Huston's films sensitively portray humankind in all its incarnations, chronicling the attempts by protagonists to conceive and articulate their identities. Fundamental questions of selfhood, happiness and love are intimately connected to the idea of home, which for the filmmaker also signified a congenial place among other people in the world. In this study, Lesley Brill shows Huston's films to be far more than formulaic adventures of masculine failure, arguing instead that they demonstrate the close connection between humanity, the natural world, and divinity.

Documentary Film Classics offers close readings on a number of major films, such as Nanook of the North, Land Without Bread, Night and Fog, Chronicle of a Summer and Don't Look Back. Spanning the history of the documentary film tradition, William Rothman analyses the philosophical and historical issues and themes implicit in these works. Designed to guide film students through the 'texts' of a wide range of documentaries, his readings also focus on the achievements of these works as films per se.

Russian Critics on the Cinema of Glasnost gathers together twenty-three essays written by some of Russia's most astute commentators of film and culture. Written during the 1980s and published in English for the first time, this collection includes reviews of films such as Little Vera and Taxi Blues, which were critically hailed in the West. Their comments not only illuminate important aspects of Russian filmmaking during this decade: as importantly, they capture a sense of a society in flux during the waning years of communism, as well as the larger context within which Glasnost cinema and culture developed. This collection provides insight into the successes and shortcomings of Glasnost, as captured in film, for a Western audience.

Cinema is a dominant force in the lives of many people living in Asia. A concept central to much of Asian film production is melodrama. This path-breaking study examines the importance of melodrama in the film traditions of Japan, India, China, Indonesia, the Philippines and Australia. Exploring the various ways that melodrama operates with theoretical sophistication, the various essays contained in this volume shed light on the different traditions of Asian cinema, as well as on the wider cultural discourse in which they participate.

Inside Soviet Film Satire is a lively collection of sixteen original essays by Soviet, American and Canadian scholars and film commentators. It is the first indepth examination of an important genre within the Soviet film tradition. From its origins, humour and satire have been closely linked in Soviet cinema. Nowhere in this tradition is there the pure comic genre typified in the West in films by Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton; by contrast, Soviet comedy can best be described as 'laughter with a lash'. Films made during the early years of the communist regime depicted characters and situations at a moment when the promise of socialism had yet to be realised. By the final years of totalitarian rule, filmmakers had found ways to create satirical films that powerfully indicted communism itself.

The Gorgon's Gaze is an interdisciplinary study of recurrent themes in German cinema as it has developed since the early twentieth century. Focusing on pertinent films of the pre- and post-World War II eras, Paul Coates explores the nature of expressionism, which is generally agreed to have ended with the advent of sound cinema, and its persistence in the styles of such modern masters of Film noir as Orson Welles and Ingmar Bergman. In considering the possibility of homologies between the necessary silence of pre-sound cinema and the widespread modernist aspiration to an aesthetic of silence, Coates relates theories of the sublime, the uncanny, and the monstrous to his subject. He also reflects upon problems of representability and the morality of representation of events that took place during the Nazi era.

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